Governator: College Protests Inspired by Unions

California Governor Arnold Swarzenegger has dismissed protesters who heckled him during his commencement speech at Santa Monica College (his alma mater) on Tuesday.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, responding publicly for the first time to the protesters who heckled him at a commencement speech, said he believes most students were attentive and appreciated his words.

Schwarzenegger dismissed the jeers and catcalls he endured during his speech Tuesday to about 600 graduates at Santa Monica College, telling Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly that the protesters were inspired by unions who oppose his November special election.

“It was very clear that there was a difference between the students who very much appreciated my speech, and they were sitting there and giving me a standing ovation, and then 100 people in the background, all the way up to the right of the bleachers. They were organized by the public employees’ union,” Schwarzenegger said Thursday on O’Reilly’s show.

“So these were all union people that were organizing this demonstration,” he said. “It is not the ordinary people out there. It was not the students that were protesting. The students had great respect and they enjoyed my speech.”

Schwarzenegger persevered during his commencement address, competing with catcalls and whistles from the audience. Some students and faculty members also turned their back on the governor as he spoke.

Ironically, Santa Monica College, the Governator’s alma mater has benefitted from his tenure as Governor.

Schwarzenegger has not cut community colleges at all, but in fact has boosted spending in his first budget and in his current proposal. The fee increase he backed a year ago, from $18 per unit to $26, still left California’s community college costs the lowest in the nation by far, and it also helped tens of thousands of needy students who do not pay any fees at all qualify for additional financial aid. In effect, it put a modest additional burden on the middle class to help the poor – something you’d think might be popular in this bastion of income redistribution.

The protests were organized by ANSWER, a militant anti-war group whose members hand out socialist literature and chant things such as “Long live Lenin, long live Marx.”

The Governator is fighting back with class.

Stay tuned!